"Are they identical?"

In the past year I've been asked too many times to count whether Bub and Fin are twins?  "Yep!" I say enthusiastically. 

And the question that inevitably follows .... 

You can probably guess .... 

"Are they identical?"

The thing that gets me is when it's blatantly obvious that Fin is a girl (dressed in pink) and Bub is a boy (dressed in blue).

Yet people still ask.

My response is usually to politely say, "No, they're a boy and girl".  More often than not though, the person still gives me a confused look and I can tell they're saying to themselves "So?".  At this point I'm never sure how in depth to go with the whole one embyro splitting versus two individual embryos.

Bub and Fin were conceived through IVF (in vitro fertilization).  And although I'm not shy about telling people this, or even talking about IF (infertility) in general, it can be a little awkward when chatting it up with someone you just met standing in line at Starbucks.

So I thought I would set the record straight on this one.  If you're a fellow IF-er or know someone who's been through this before, you already know the drill and can just skip to the pictures at the end (that is if you haven't already scrolled down and taken a peek!).

Fraternal twins, like Bub and Fin, are the result of two different eggs being fertilized by two different, ya know, "swimmers".  This leads to two individual embryos, each of which will develop their own placentas.  Fraternal twins, also known as Dizygotic twins, account for two-thirds of all twins.  Fraternal twins can be boy/boy, girl/girl, or boy/girl.  They share about 50% of the same DNA, so they may look similar, just like any other set of siblings.

Identical twins are the result of one fertilized egg splitting, resulting in two identical embryos.  Depending on when the split occurs, the twins may share a placenta or have their own.  The later the split occurs the more chance there is of a shared placenta (which may or may not lead to a more high risk pregnancy).  Identical twins must be both boys or both girls, they cannot be boy/girl.  This is because identical twins, also called Monozygotic twins, share nearly identical DNA.

Hopefully this isn't too much information overload.  But for many of us in the IF world, at one point or another, we've had to live and breath this stuff.  I know what you're thinking, "Lucky us, right!".  Ok, maybe not.  But there is comfort, at least there was for me, in being as educated and informed as possible.  It's why us IF-ers have so many message boards, forums, and blogs out there.  It's the same with any other group or cause, we tend to stick together.  It's how we adapt, learn, and evolve.

One of the perks (yes, I did just say "perk"!) of being an IVF patient was seeing our embryos at a mere 5 days old.  I mean, seriously, that's way cool.  High five to the marvels of modern medicine!

IVF also means lots and lots of ultrasounds.  We had over 25 ultrasounds with Bub and Fin.  Just to put that in perspective, in a "normal" pregnancy a mom-to-be will have between 2-3 ultrasounds.

Finally, the good part.  The pictures .... 

Here are Bub and Fin as 5-day old embryos.

And here they are at our 6 1/2 week ultrasound.  As soon as we heard two sets of heartbeats we knew it was twins!  Baby A (we called him "Alvin") is Bub and Baby B (we called her "Betty") is Fin.

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